yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

She Explores the Universe with Photos, Ink, and Water | Short Film Showcase


3m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music]

I've always been drawn to stories of exploration: the scope of the vision, the ambition of it, the amount of endurance required, and then, of course, the human history of facing the unknown and pushing into it. So, in 2015, my partner, Jamaican Alice, and I decided to embark on a great expedition across the United States. We titled the expedition "Red Charting Pre-Charted Territory" because we were trying to reference this history of exploration.

We wanted to explore that tradition as artists living, you know, in the 21st century. How do you paint a landscape as an artist in the 21st century? How do you explore the Great Western wilderness of the United States when it's already been totally explored, and it's all domesticated? There's very little wilderness, and what is so wild is highly managed.

[Music]

From that experience, we were on the road for about seven months. We came back home with about 14,000 photographs. So, I would say most of the work that I'm working on now is utilizing those images. You can't just stop and sit and try to think your way into an interesting idea. For me, at least, I have to really be engaging with something that has a lot of layers to it, that is inherently interesting or complex, in order to put myself in a space where I can take advantage of ideas as they emerge.

A lot of the subject matter in the collages are the subjects that I'm interested in working in my larger pieces. So then, when I do get an idea for the larger artwork, I'm already in motion, and I just take that energy from the collage process right into the body of work. This work is a part of a project that I've been working on for about five years. I take large sheets of paper, lay them on a flat cement pad, and hose it down with water, and then I can drop ink on it.

[Music]

When you spread ink onto wet paper, you get these forms that are reminiscent of clouds, of atmosphere, of cosmic weather. It is the same physics that dictate the movement of that ink on paper as the physics that dictate something that might be happening in a star factory, you know, millions or billions of miles away. But you can see it on a human scale, and you can watch it in the human time scale, so it's happening right in front of you.

When I create a piece of paper that's stained like this, you know, it really looks like a wild space. It's very unpredictable, very organic. And when I start to go in and work on the structures, they start to become like these little domesticated spaces in this wilderness. I think about the art-making process as kind of like going out into uncharted territory where you don't really know where you're going.

Making something that's already so beautiful more interesting requires, you know, a lot more sophistication on the part of my ideas. So, I'm working on something right now that's going to lead me to a space where I've learned something new about what's possible. To me, that's very exciting because it is this constant pushing forward into an unknown space to try to figure out what possibilities lie there.

You need to constantly be feeding your sense of wonder and your sense of curiosity.

[Music]

[Music]

More Articles

View All
Your Mass is NOT From the Higgs Boson
Twenty-one grams. That is the mass of all of the electrons in your body if, like me, you weigh about 70 kilograms. Now, all of the mass comes from the Higgs mechanism, which means that as your electrons are traveling through space time, they interact with…
The Stock Market is Currently Broken | Stock Market Crash in 2021?
[Music] Well, here we are, guys. We are almost at the end. Can you believe it? We are almost at the end of 2020. And no secret, 2020 has been a…it’s been a rough year. It’s not been very nice. There’s been a lot of very negative things happening just in …
Nat Geo Photographers: How They Got Their Start | National Geographic
[Music] You know, we all start from somewhere. For me, I thought if I could just give a voice and a name to wildlife by using my camera, then that’s it. It was very important for me to immortalize stories, so I started capturing moments happening around m…
This U.S. Fencer Is Named After a Warrior Queen—and It Shows | Short Film Showcase
I don’t like to fight people, but you can’t get by without fighting. My mom named me after Queen Ninga from Angola; she was a warrior queen. I met Peter Westbrook when I was nine. Peter Westbrook is a legend in US fencing. He fenced at a time when black f…
Safari Live - Day 218 | National Geographic
This program features live coverage of an African safari and may include animal kills and caucuses. Viewer discretion is advised. There’s why the inclusion of the pride is such a firm favorite. [Music] How insane was that, everybody? And welcome to the 1…
What Would Elon Musk Work On If He Were 22?
You famously said when you were younger there were five problems that you thought were most important for you to work on. If you were 22 today, what would the five problems that you would think about working on be? Well, I think if somebody is doing some…